House of Assembly: Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Contents

Mental Health Services

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (14:46): My question is again to the Minister for Mental Health. As Minister for Mental Health, do you find it acceptable that people with mental health issues are restrained in health facilities by Correctional Services staff with hard restraints?

The Hon. L.A. VLAHOS (Taylor—Minister for Disabilities, Minister for Mental Health and Substance Abuse) (14:46): As I have said to the house on a number of occasions, the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist has actually led modernisation of how we deal with restraint and seclusion information across the state and how we collect that data. I issued a press release on this last year and some of that trauma-informed training and care was actually run across the whole of government, including Corrections.

It is an important area and we will continue to work towards educating people to use the best and most contemporary method of trauma-informed restraint and seclusion. It was a US training organisation that we partnered with last year, and I'm happy to continue to support our rolling that out across the system and to work with my ministerial colleagues collectively and supportively to continually improve how we deliver services to people who might have challenging behaviours.